GeForce GTX 260 strange lag..

[injectx]

--[ Help me solve this problem and I will donate $10 to Tony and another $10 to the user who gave the solution! ]--

Hi!

Well first of all I must say I have my Hackintosh system for over an half year now and it has been working really great!

Until.. yesterday, when the UI animations (exposé/spaces) began to behave a bit more choppy than usual. The animations were sometimes a bit choppy before but most of the time (exposé/genie effect) extremely fluid.

I then decided to do something about it. So what I did was fire up OSX86Tools and did ENABLE Quartz GL. Did a reboot after that and.. what do you know.. my animations were choppier than ever. Just every window animation is extremely laggy etc. So when I wanted to DISABLE Quartz GL again, it gave me an error, saying that some.. file was not found.

After that I did some research on the interwebs and did thing like: updating my DSDT file, removing AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext, reverting my extensions folder via Time Machine, changing my system identifiers from Mac Pro i5 to iMac etc.... Graphicsenabler=Yes. Nothing.. Still running on extremely choppy graphics. The only thing I had edited for my videocard being recognized was GraphicsEnabler=Yes, that was all.

So since I'm both desperate to get back to my perfectly working Hackintosh and on some deadlines with work-related stuff I decided to donate $10 to the one who gives the solution and another $10 to Tony because I'm still very happy with the MultiBeast installing method.

Other important stuff:
- I've overclocked my i5-750 a bit with the 20x multiplier to have the memory working at 1600Mhz. Now running at 3,2Ghz.

Thanks in advance!

 

[forch]

Sounds like an EDID, Buffer or compat device-id problem.

Check this post, though you have changed/reverted so much, that I don't know if you can be sure if any modification might work.

 

[injectx]

Small update:
For some strange reason, everything got back the way it was, so desktop effects were smooth all of a sudden. Really weird.

But still not perfect. Yesterday I was Photoshopping some stuff with several windows open. Also a load of tabs opened in Chrome. Desktop effects were 100% fluid and smooth.

This morning I booted up, fired up Chrome and Mail, not 100% smooth exposé and spaces even less fluid. So.. my guess is that my card maybe has problems.. I really don't know.

This is my boot plist, maybe there's something wrong there:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>Kernel</key>
	<string>mach_kernel</string>
	<key>Kernel Flags</key>
	<string>arch=i386</string>
	<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
	<string>Yes</string>
	<key>Timeout</key>
	<string>1</string>
	<key>Legacy Logo</key>
	<string>Yes</string>
	<key>EthernetBuiltIn</key>
	<string>Yes</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Thanks forch for your answer but I didn't find anything useful there.

 

[Maryus3D]

I was going to make a new thread about this problem but I found that you you have a similar problem like mine.

I had 10.6.3 on my system with NVEnabler, smbios model Mac Pro 4.1 and everything worked flawless. I had full 3D acceleration on my 3D modeling apps like maya and modo, games, benches, OSX interface etc. I decide to upgrade to 10.6.6 to get the new drivers, the app store, Safari 5 and all other fixes for OSX. After update the GPU is some how underclocked or it entered on some kind of power saving mode in both idle and load. I looked for solutions on other thread and I saw that the problem comes from AppleGraphicPowerManagement.kext. I'v tried to edit info.plist under Mac Pro 4.1 section then Mac Pro 5.1 section the device ID of my card. Noting happened. Then I completely removed AppleGraphicPowerManagement.kext and changed the smbios to Mac Pro 3.1. Here I sow some progress. In load the card is back to its default clock speed and I have full 3D acceleration, even better than 10.6.3 on OpenGL apps. Also when I have a 3D app open the OSX UI works flawless. But when the card is on idle the GPU frequency is falling again in power saver mode or something like that and the UI is choppy, buggy and laggy especially when I change spaces between them. I'v tried 10.000 combinations with smbios and AppleGraphicPowerManagement.kext nothing happened. I'v installed the official Quadro 4000 drivers, again no results. The driver update completely destroyed octane render support (a CUDA based app) so I have to reinstall 10.6.6 to get the default drivers back. Then I installed tonymac nvidia fermi update nothing happened and again octane render crashes and I had to reinstall 10.6.6. It was a horrible pain .


At least in load the card is waking up. The problem is 50% solved when removing AppleGraphicPowerManagement.kext or set smbios to Mac Pro 3.1.

Can somebody help? Please, please and again please .

 

[injectx]

Jep that indeed sounds like the same problem. Also, when I have Angry Birds (2D game) active and want to switch in-game using exposé or spaces, there is absolutely NO lag.

Just like you said, the card goes into idle mode for some reason when there is little to do.

EDIT#1: I don't think there is any relation with the GPU temperature and the lag in desktop effects. On a fresh boot this morning, the laginess was already there.

EDIT#2: Closed down Angry birds about 20mins. ago. Desktop effects are still 100% smooth.

EDIT#3: Few hours later, still running very smoothly. Few apps open: iTunes, RSS-Reader, Chrome (10 tabs), FileShuttle, Photoshop (4 PSD's).

EDIT#4: PC ran the entire day (12 hours) without ANY lag.

 

[Maryus3D]

I set smbios to Mac Pro 5.1 and AppleGraphicPowerManagement.kext edited with the device ID under Mac Pro 5.1 section and permissions repaired. If I have 4 full screen windows (finder windows) opened in each spaces the animation is choppy. If i push the spaces button 2 times the animation is still choppy but when I push third time the spaces button the animation is flawless and the full GPU power is activated. But after 5 sec the screen gets buggy again : . I guess something needs to be edited in AppleGraphicPowerManagement.kext more than just a simple device ID under Mac Pro section. Something needs to be tweak over there to leave the card constantly at the default clock speed but I can't find what .



EDIT: I don't like this idea to keep underclock and overclock the card frequent. This might damage the card who knows :? .

 

[injectx]

Booted my pc this morning, tried the effects, exposé was kinda OK, spaces was not that smooth. So I fired up Angry Birds again, like I did yesterday. Only today it didn't help me solve the lag. So, fired up StarCraft II, ran it for about 2-3 minutes but that also didn't do it. So.. what triggers Quartz to go into full speed?

Made a screenshot from my Graphics/Display tab in System Profiler, maybe somethin' wrong here:

As I don't see any Quartz/Core Image related things here?

 

[injectx]

Well what I did was:

1. Replacing my AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext with the one you sent me.
-- Got an error that the kext is not compatible --
2. Ran Multibeast and set smbios to Mac Pro 4,1, fixed permissions and rebooted.
3. System booted, still laggy.

My info.plist inside AppleGraphicsPowerManagement shows:

<key>Vendor10deDevice05e2</key>

Which matches my GeForce GTX 260.

Did I miss anything?

 

[injectx]

Also I just set my BIOS defaults back to "Optimized" because I figured it could have something to do with the overclocking to 3.2 Ghz.

Then booted the system and everything was smooth as hell. For a few seconds. After I opened Chrome it was all back to laggy etc. When I open/close Spaces for about 20 times, everything is smooth again (for a small period), then laggy again.

I really can't think of something else.

@Maryus3D: did you completely replace the AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext or just replaced the MacPro 4,1 section inside the info.plist?

 

[injectx]

Just set my clock speeds back to 3.2 Ghz. Booted. Again, first seconds very smoothly, then I disconnect (eject) my Windows 7 HD because it makes the noise and I don't need it at the moment, then Spaces gets all laggy again. ... *sigh*